During Apple’s Q1 2013 earnings call, CEO Tim Cook took a moment to address the rumors of iPhone component cuts which caused some consternation recently. Though he said he didn’t want to address specific rumors, he did say that basing judgements on a single data point of cut component orders would be impossible to interpret correctly anyway.

Cook said that he would ‘recommend questioning the accuracy’ of those rumors, especially given that there were so many possible interpretations.

“I’d also stress that, even if a particular data point were to be factual, it would be impossible to interpret what that data point means to our business”, said Cook. “Our supply chain is very complex and we have multiple sources for our components. Yields can vary…supplier performance can vary. There’s an inordinate list of things that would make any single data point not a great proxy for what’s going on.”

Reports that Apple had cut orders from one supplier for screens caused many to interpret that as a significant reduction in iPhone orders for Q2 of 2013.